


Estranged Sun

by Druddigonite



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: Sword & Shield | Pokemon Sword & Shield Versions
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, One-Sided Attraction, POV Second Person, Relationship Study, Reverse Chronology, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:08:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23418001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Druddigonite/pseuds/Druddigonite
Summary: Hop moves like he always does: eyes on the road, marching forward with singular intent, while you lag behind and linger in the tall grass.Hop and Gloria, a deconstruction in reverse.
Relationships: Hop/Yuuri | Gloria
Comments: 18
Kudos: 71





	Estranged Sun

You find Hop in the Slumbering Weald again, sitting on the marble platform with his feet grazing the water below, staring off in the distant dawn. He doesn’t notice you, doesn’t glance back as you climb up the stairs, as you settle down next to him. 

“Morning, Gloria,” Hop says.

There is no familiar wave, no heartfelt preamble. Hop says your name like one would greet a stranger on the street, and when he smiles, you find it never reaches his eyes. 

“I guess it’s time I’ve taken up a new dream” he murmurs, “Sonia’s offered me a spot as her assistant, after the previous one...you know.”

”It’s good for me, I think. Another goal to work towards, no more playing hero. I might take it.” 

He stands up slow and methodically, a far cry from the enthusiasm that defined his challenger days. Looks down at you, like he expects you to stand up too. 

(You don’t. The old Gloria would’ve followed in his footsteps for a lifetime, but that Gloria died with the gym challenge, died with her best friend; nowadays Hop’s shadow is too small to fit behind, and you walk this path alone.) 

You cannot meet his eyes. The brook is still running clear beneath you, so you reach down and splay your fingers against the current. Feel silt cool against your skin—trickling downstream, too quick to hold onto—sliding past then gone. 

_I’m happy for you._

Your mouth tastes like sand. You’ve torn him down again and again, and now he’s gone somewhere else to pick up the pieces. 

“Thank you. For being my rival.” His voice cracks and you look at him, finally see him. Grown, jaw and shoulders broad like his brother’s, the cut he received from fighting Eternatus cleaving the edges of his cheek. You notice a fringe of stubble as he opens his mouth, as if he wants to spill. 

Finally chokes out: “This is a goodbye then? I know being champion is quite busy.” 

There’s nothing more to say. _It is._

You both say your last goodbyes, and part the weald as strangers.

.  
.  
.

Motostoke seems less intimidating now.

It’s as if your championship has downsized your world. You can recall your first impressions of the city as _huge_ , intertwined structures and machinery almost alive as they grind against your skull, tide over your thoughts. After two weeks in the Wild Area and a lifetime in the countryside, the surge of information had been overwhelming. 

You had a friend, a future champion. He didn’t laugh when you clamped your hands over your ears, didn’t become annoyed when you kept bumping into him. Instead, he had guided you with his voice, all the way to the stadium. 

Today, the sun is nowhere to be seen. The streets are empty, and most of the light is coming from the gym, blood-red and otherworldly. Torkoal roars; the battleground is getting more chaotic by the minute, and you don’t know which second will be your last. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Cinderace slammed into the bleachers. It’s withdrawn in a streak of blue. 

No time for concern; you'd only make things worse, like you always do. There is nothing else to do but bottle your fears beyond the horizon of _after this is over_ , where they sink like all the others.

.  
.  
.

When you first rode the train to the start of the wild area, Hop pressed his face against the windowpanes and pointed out the land he wanted to reform, renovation projects he wanted to introduce to cities. _When I’m Champion_ , he’d said. You wonder where that Hop has gone, the boy who loved Galar like no other, the boy who leapt for the limitless.

 _That Hop died_ , said the husk of a boy waiting for you at the end; said in his too-small figure framed by dark leaves and roiling river, said in the chill in the air and a lifetime of distance between the two of you. 

Seeing people change doesn’t hurt; what hurts is remembering who they used to be.

The trees bow down in a funeral procession. He grabs the rusted sword with all the stoicism of a mourning man, and you heft up your shield like a gravestone.

.  
.  
.

It feels like drowning. Dread roils in your lungs, awful alien lights still tearing at your vision as you stumble towards the stadium’s exit tunnel. Thunderclouds have swallowed the sky. There’s screaming, somewhere—perhaps from the field, perhaps from you—but it’s all blurring together, a thousand miles underwater.

Hop’s leaning against the wall, awash in pallid tones. 

_(“Maybe I’m not the hero.”)_

_Hop_ , you gasp. He is coiled as tightly as the storm outside, flinches violently when you grab his shoulder; with how little you two see each other nowadays, it should hurt less than it does. _Leon’s going after Rose in the tower, we have to help him!_

“Help?” Hop laughs, the alien timbre of windless chimes. “I couldn’t even manage to beat you, Gloria. What help could I ever be?” 

Maybe on another clearer, calmer day you would’ve taken his hand to press apologies against it, try to patch the broken bridges of your relationship, but today your fear cries louder than your guilt and what’s left of pity tears out in an ugly snarl. _Now’s not the time for this! I’m going to try my best to stop the Darkest Day, and I need your help._

Hop stands, still as a corpse.

 _Hop_ , you repeat, voice weaker this time, _You’re my friend. Please._

To his credit, he dips his head and takes your words. When he looks up again, there's a flicker of old determination in his eyes. “Let’s go to the Slumbering Weald. If the legends are correct, the secret to stopping Rose is in there.” 

It’s a sound plan. 

He presses into the shadows while you run ahead. It isn’t until you take his hand to pull him forward that you realize they’re shaking.

.  
.  
.

You win the battle.

Again. 

And again.

And again. 

You don’t know why it’s so exhausting, why you cut yourself on the razor’s edge of inevitability. Because that’s what it is: inevitable, in the way history repeats itself, smaller Darkest Days enclosed within a battlefield. Hop demands a match, you accept. Hop loses, you win. It is the home stretch of the gym challenge; the stakes are high, and you’re too drunk on glory let go. 

Battling is the only thing you’re beyond average at, and the fact is that you love battling: love the way it narrows worlds down into the heat of the moment, love how the connection between you and your pokemon crystallizes in the final blow. 

You loved Hop too, but the two cannot coexist together.

 _Good luck in the finals_ , you say to your best friend, surprised by how smoothly the lie slips from your teeth. He shoots you a look you can’t decipher. 

You don’t know him anymore. That, too, is an inevitability.

.  
.  
.

You’ve been avoiding Hop recently.

It’s mostly for his benefit—you’ve been systematically obliterating his morale every time you’ve battled, and it would do him good to clear his mind from competition. Rivals set goals; friends help reach them. You only caused him pain. 

Circhester reopens an old wound. You weren’t expecting to almost crash into him at the gym doors, a whirlwind of thinly disguised emotion, spilling before you’ve recovered your balance. Something something how’s it going. Something something long time no see. Mindless pleasantries that make you wonder when your relationship has frozen over enough to have them. 

Ice gives way. He’s lost a gym battle. 

It seems to arrest his forward momentum, you think, as he lists out alternate team builds like a mantra. Current team isn’t strong enough. Change up some moves, change up some pokemon. Whittle skill down to a fine point, cast off anyone too ungainly to keep up. Then I’ll be champion. 

“Meet me outside!” He calls when your appointment flashes on the big screen. 

The badge hangs heavy in your pocket when you meet him at Hero’s Bath. Hop doesn’t ask how the gym challenge went—small mercy—but instead challenges you to a battle. 

There is no point in refusing. Hop hurts, you hurt, Hop loses, you lose; there is a consistency to digging this grave that has you trapped. Forward momentum, the inertia of bad decisions. 

“Why did you stop answering your rotom-phone?” He calls from the other end of the battlefield, while his corviknight is slammed onto the ground. Neither of you are focused on the battle. You could soothe your apologies with something accidental (maybe the phone lost battery, or was stolen) but you eventually settle on the truth. He deserves that much, at least. 

“You felt like you were dragging me down?” His cinderace is your last shred of familiarity, older and grown; it falls just like the others. “Glor, I thought you didn’t want to be associated with me anymore. That-that _I_ was dragging _you_ down. Just like Lee.” 

The battle is over. 

You’ve lost. Promise you’ll never distance yourself again as Hop hands you his battle money. His smile is a watery dawn, you think, early Postwick mornings after a long night of rain. 

“Thank you. I always knew you’d support me.” His arms are open and he almost looks twelve years old again, offering a hug. 

Then you lean in, he twists his head to capture your lips. 

(You don’t know what you expected. You don’t know what he expected.)

Ice crawls through your veins, so cold it burns. Hop draws back, hopeful; you probably look like the epitome of a blushing damsel right now. His next sentence is a vulnerable, desperate little thing. “I love you, Glor.” 

Everything is too, too much. You tear yourself out of his embrace and stagger away in the snow.

.  
.  
.

Here's the funny thing: you have never, ever wanted the championship.

It’s Hop who is always chasing stars, you think, an icarus alight on battlebound glory and fame-gilded legacy. Hop, arms splayed and staring at the sun while you pluck feathers from your tattered sparrow’s wings. Place them, one by one, against his. 

(You only need to glide, coast the sea currents just enough that the waves don’t pull you under. But Hop? Hop was born to _fly_.) 

It’s too late now, anyways. Nothing can fix this; no _I’m sorry_ s or _I believe in you_ s or _I love you_ s, no amount of _let’s work through this together_ s or _be strongs_. Thrown battles cannot replace ruined wax. A resignation will not restore wind under wings.

Hop is falling, and you don’t know what’s worse: that you cannot cushion his descent, or that you carried him so high in the first place.

.  
.  
.

_Hop,_ nobody _thinks you’re dragging Leon’s name in the mud._

“Don’t lie Glor, you’ve read the articles they’ve written about me. I’m supposed to be his successor! And it reflects badly on Lee if I lose to some _cocky pink punk_.” 

_It’s okay, it wasn’t an official battle. I’m-I’m pretty sure it doesn’t affect anything, he’s just trying to get a rise out of you._

“This won’t be the only time! The challenge is only going to get harder from here; if I keep going like this my losses _will_ become official. I need—I need to get stronger. Find a way to optimize my team, so I won’t be a disgrace to Lee’s image anymore—”

 _Please, stop thinking about your brother for_ just one second—

“—I’ve grown up watching him work hard to climb his way to the top, and he deserves all of it. What he doesn’t deserve is his clumsy little brother stumbling after him ruining everything—”

_—because I’ve grown up with a guy named Hop, not a guy named ‘Lee’, and it’s hard watching someone else steal the fun out of your best friend’s journey by association!_

“Battle me.” 

_W-what?_

“Battle me,” He brandishes a pokeball from his pack, voice strained taut. He is desperate, crouched in a corner, he’s pulled you along with him. You’re playing with fate: to reject his challenge like what he needs, to accept it like what he wants; to give it your honest go, or to throw the match in his favor. 

What would a rival do? What would a rival do?

You’re his rival, friend, there to support him. 

(In the end, there was no way to win. Hop’s last pokemon faints on flaking Stow-On-Side steps, and you hang your head in bitter defeat.)

.  
.  
.

You camp together outside Hammerlocke gates, under the stars. When Hop releases his team, you notice his wooloo is keenly absent.

.  
.  
.

Monuments fall. Later on, Leon’s gigantamax charizard will collapse at your feet with a groan, and the crowd will swell louder than they ever did in the din of your living room, _for you_ , as you fall to your knees under the burden of it all. Dominos falling into place in Rose Tower, a stack of cards gone awry. Stow-On-Side, the crumbled remains of someone's hopes and dreams splayed in stone.

But today, you’re taking your first step into the wild area. The sun is shining, the skies are clear. Hop’s at your side talking about how he can’t wait to reach Motostoke, but all you hear are the chirps of rookidee, the subtle shuffle of tall grass, and, farther away, the susurrus of waves lapping on shore. 

The future is glittering with potential, and you lose him in the horizon

.  
.  
.

“Hey, Gloria. Is this your first time in a Pokémon Center?”

You fidget, your starter’s ball still warm between your hands. It’s a familiar sight, only a block away from the farmer’s market where you buy your weekly groceries, but you’ve never given much thought about what it does. You’ve never given much thought about _any of this_ , prior to your first battle.

But you have Hop here. Hop, future champion, rival, friend, who guides you through the utilities with the patience he has with stray wooloos. Everything will be alright. 

It is a beautiful day.

.  
.  
.

During your first battle, it is _Hop_ who loses. 

.  
.  
.

Mum had drilled into you her sense of caution, the fear of what lay beyond moss-swathed stone walls and weathered wood fences; but Hop’s already several meters ahead of you, fog blurring the edges of his figure, so you tamp down your wariness and step into the Slumbering Weald.

Hop moves like he always does: eyes on the road, marching forward with singular intent, while you lag behind and linger in the tall grass. The fog’s growing thicker, more substance than air, until you can’t see a centimeter in front of your face. An overgrown root hooks your foot and you stumble.

“Gloria!” He emerges from the fog just in time to see you prop yourself up on scraped elbows to spit out the dirt you ate. You shakily accept his offered hand; he helps you untangle your feet and pulls you up. “Are you okay? Do you want to be taken back?” 

You shake your head vehemently ( _you’re already dragging him down, he had found that wooloo by now if he weren’t waiting for you to catch up_ ), pushing him away. Tell him that you’re fine, you just can’t see, that’s all. 

“Then hold my hand.” His palm is warm against yours, familiar in all the times you’ve seen them when he brushes his wooloo, when he mimes massive battles he’s seen in the broadcasts, when he points at stars and lists off constellations during sleepy nights on the moors. You grip it like a lifeline.

.  
.  
.

"There he goes!" Hop yells, bouncing on the couch in the way Mum always tells you not to do. "GMax wildfire! WOOSH!" He rolls off the cushions and flops onto the ground.

You hug Munchax and watch as the opponent's duraludon falls to a gout of flames. Mum has tidied you up with pigtails and a pretty sundress in preparation for your play-date; you wonder why she put in so much effort when the only thing Hop wants to do is jump on the couch and watch the telly. 

And there it is: a close up shot of Hop’s brother Lee, the one he’d always talk about. There are roars, fanfare dulled by the static of the speakers. Another year of reign, the announcer says. Undefeated champion, they say. The camera pans until he’s larger than life, flashing his signature pose.

You watch as Hop copies it. Strikes his arm up in the air as if the living room lamp is his stage light and the cheers from the telly are his crowd. 

By the time commercials came on, he’s beaming and breathless. “Leon better watch out for me,” he declares, “I’m ‘bout to be the _next_ undefeated champion!” 

(He’s already dreaming of bigger things, you think, chasing crowns beyond the scope of your quiet little world. Wonder how far he’d chase it, how long until you can’t catch up.) 

_I’ll be your rival then_ , you say. You’ve heard Hop yammer on and on about how the best trainers have rivals—Raihan was Leon’s, after all—you’d catch a pokemon, maybe get a chance to breathe before you suffocate in these rural hinterlands. You’ll follow Hop into forever. 

“Really?” Hop rests his arms on the couch, grin alive across his face. “We’ll race for badges together! Thank you, Gloria.” 

_That’s what best friends are for, isn’t it?_ Hop hollers as Leon holds up the trophy, and you hide your smile behind your munchlax. 

So it is.

.  
.  
.

Word travels fast that there’s a new girl in town.

Postwick is a sleepy enclave, eroding into an older demographic as youth leave to find their due in the cities. All the grannies and aunties gather to place you on their laps, pinch your cheeks and slip you teacakes. They are your company as Mum learns to work in the field. 

There is also a boy, the younger one of two from a neighboring family. He smiles like sunshine, laughs like summer; carries himself with infallible confidence, acts as if the world is his playground. He succeeds where you do not. 

His name is Hop. 

“And...there!” Hop’s fingers finish off the knot with a flourish. You examine the new friendship bracelets on your wrist: the one with small flowers tucked between the threads, the dyed one, the dusty one you accidentally dropped on the dirt. He holds up the one you just gave him, meticulously threaded with beads and a scorbunny pendant (a souvenir from your old home, before your mum packed up and moved to the country). It is one to his three and took you too long to make. “Now we’re best friends.” 

Yes, Hop is your best friend. 

As if reading your thoughts, Hop slips it on and holds up a pinky promise. “Best friends forever?” 

You link your finger with his. “Best friends forever,” you say.

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me on tumblr [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/druddigoon)
> 
> also huge thank you to pyroxene for putting up with my angst sobbing during the process of this fic


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